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Saturday, 25 February 2017

Occasionally new discoveries in historical research are not
unlike coming upon a buried treasure hoard (and sometimes of course that is
exactly what they are). One of my personal favourites is the long-neglected
manuscript in Sir Walter Scott’s library that turned out to be a translation by
Osbern Bokenham of Jacobus de Voraigne’s Golden
Legend. Bokenham scholars had always known such a translation had been made,
but they thought that every manuscript had been lost. Yet more remarkably, the
medievalist Simon Horobin has made a very persuasive case that this was the
very manuscript that Richard III’s mother, Cecily duchess of York, owned and
eventually bequeathed to one of her granddaughters. This beautiful manuscript
is now available for anyone to view online at the Faculty of Advocates’
website.

More often discoveries are much less spectacular, albeit
still valuable pieces of the jigsaw of our understanding of the past. Many of
these jigsaw pieces of knowledge emerge from parchment pages in the archives.
Others have been sat, ignored, on academic library shelves for generations
without making their way into more accessible history books. This was the case
with the inspiration for a brief article I have written for the forthcoming Ricardian Bulletin. I had ordered up
volume 144 of the publications of the Surtees Society, which our university library keeps
hidden in a great store. I knew it was a transcription of a couple of
sixteenth-century heraldic manuscripts that had been copied from earlier
pedigrees and I was hoping to learn more about the Neville family whose
genealogy it included. When I flipped open the pages to the royal family, I was
pleasantly surprised to see that it included every one of Richard III’s
brothers and sisters.

The most widely circulated lists of Richard III’s siblings
(associated with William Worcester) are incomplete. Hitherto I had only found
mention of Richard III’s brother Thomas in the Clare Roll and the Bede Roll of
the London Parish Clerks’ fraternity. What excited me about finding all of the
children’s names here was that, for those who had died before 1483, in most
cases their place of burial (and sometimes their place of death) had been
included in the genealogy. It has to be confessed that this is not a wholly
accurate genealogy. However, the mistakes in it can easily be explained by
careless copying (an Edward has become Thomas like his son; Tewkesbury has been
rendered Fotheringhay, perhaps because of so many other mentions of
Fotheringhay). It seems unlikely that someone had simply invented the
references to these children’s burials, especially since places of burial are
not given for all of them. No one will be surprised to learn that Henry,
Thomas, William and Ursula were all buried at Fotheringhay. Their father,
Richard duke of York, clearly intended this church to be the family mausoleum. Yet
I am not sure that any recent historian has previously pondered where these children’s
bones might lie.

They may have been no more than days old when they died, or
perhaps a few years. As individuals they made no impact on our island’s history
as their longer-lived siblings did. Nonetheless, the knowledge of their
funerals and burials at Fotheringhay is another fragment of the
fifteenth-century to illuminate our understanding of Richard III’s world.

J. L. Laynesmith

Fotheringhay church, east end. The bones of Richard's siblings most likely lie here where the choir once stood. The remains of their parents, Richard duke of York and Cecily Neville, were moved from here in Elizabeth I's reign.

Facial Reconstruction of Richard III

About This Blog

The Richard III Society was set up ‘to promote, in every possible way, research into the life and times of Richard III’. The purpose of this blog is to help share knowledge of this research, whether it has been carried out by Society members, with Society funding, or completely independently of the Society. It is hoped that it will be of value both to Society members and to anyone interested in the fifteenth century.

Most posts will be written by members of the Society’s Research Committee and all posts will be checked by Committee members before publication. However, all views expressed therein are those of the individual authors rather than of the Richard III Society as a whole. While every effort will be made to avoid publishing inaccurate information, the Society cannot be held responsible for errors and readers are encouraged to check out sources mentioned in the posts. All posts are copyrighted to their authors and any reference to information contained therein should be credited to the author accordingly.

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The Research Committee

Chair - Dr Joanna Laynesmith

Secretary - Howard Choppin

Research contact - Marie Barnfield

Bursary Officer - Dr Tig Lang

Palaeography Course Tutor - Dr Heather Falvey

Research Events Officer – Dr Lynda Pidgeon.

Other committee members are:

Dr Anne Sutton

Dr Livia Visser Fuchs

Peter Hammond

Ken Hillier

Toni Mount

John Saunders

Dr Matthew Ward.

The committee's primary responsibility is the management and delivery of the Society’s research agenda. Specific tasks are:

•Managing the Society’s research projects, facilitating research by members and dealing with queries from them and the general public.

•Administering the Society’s bursaries and the palaeography course.

•Liaising with the academic community and representing the Society on the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust.

•Promoting the academic image of the Society to the media and through management of the historical content of the Society’s website.

•Organising research weekends, the Triennial conference and other educational/research events as required.